Bangladesh Bank (BB) has increased its supply of foreign currency to the Energy and Mineral Resources Division to continue its import of petroleum fuels and gas from abroad and also from locally operating foreign companies.
According to officials, the Energy and Mineral Resources Division has been getting more foreign currency support from the Bangladesh Bank to pay the foreign gas and petroleum suppliers.
“Earlier we have been receiving about $200 million per week to pay the gas and petroleum bills to foreign companies…Now we’re getting more than that amount”, Energy Secretary Nurul Alam told UNB.
The remarks from the energy secretary came against the backdrop of the government's outstanding bills with foreign gas and fuel suppliers which recently exceeded more than $500 million.
The recent cash crunch, especially in foreign currency supply, created uncertainty over the smooth import of petroleum fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG) and also the purchase of natural gas from foreign company-operated local gas fields.
According to official sources, the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), which is responsible for petroleum fuel import, has dues of $220 million while Petrobangla has a pending bill of $280 million for paying to foreign companies including Chevron Bangladesh for gas purchase.
Nurul Alam hoped that the payment situation would further improve as the Energy and Mineral Resources Division has been holding one-to-one meetings with the suppliers.
“We hope there will be no problem in continuing our import of petroleum and LNG from abroad and also purchasing gas from locally operating foreign companies”, he added.
Bangladesh need to import 6.5 million tonnes of different petroleum fuels annually from the international market under separate annual contracts at a cost of $6-7 billion while it has to import a substantial quantity of LNG (5.06 million tonnes) from Qatar Gas, Oman Trading, and the Spot market at a cost of $4.555 billion.
Besides this, Bangladesh has to pay a huge amount of foreign currency for its purchase of electricity from different private power companies which now have over $4.5 billion.
The import of petroleum fuels and LNG came under pressure following the decline of foreign currency reserves which came below $19 billion in 2023 from over $48 billion in 2022.
As a result, the government had to reduce imports of LNG for some time last year.
